I Miss Schultz Already

In Other Topics by aisle42441 Comments

Warning: This post barely mentions the Cubs and even then only in a tangential manner. It will also contain what I can only assume will be a nauseating amount of sentimental nonsense. Please feel free to skip straight to the comments and post inappropriate GIFs, hilarious Alvin photoshops, or even some baseball stuff. In fact, whether you read the post or not, please do those things since I could really use a good laugh.

Today is the day I have been dreading for quite awhile. When you have an old pet, I think the day when they finally go to their final resting place is always not as far from your thoughts as you'd like. With my cat, Schultz, it has been looming in the forefront of my mind for pretty much the last year.

He was 18 years old (give or take a month or two) and he started having seizures about a year ago. Since that time he's had various issues where he seemed to be staring at the light, but then turning away at the last second to stay with us here on this plane of existence. So when he started having difficulty walking to his litterbox in the middle of the night and lost his appetite again this morning, we weren't exactly surprised. We'd been preparing for it in our minds all along. This time, he practically made our decision for us by crashing as hard as he did so quickly, but the speed in which he left us has stunned us into a bit of shock.

The stupor is similar to my state of mind shortly after Game 6 in 2003. 

As Cubs fans, I think we all expect disaster to strike at any time, no matter how good the team may seem to be at any given time. We pretty much know that there is another shoe somewhere just waiting to drop, probably onto our heads. So when the Cubs lost their lead only eight pitches after Moises Alou lost his shit, and when Mike Fucking Mordecai put it out of reach with one swing, the Cubs' World Series chances died a very unsurprising, yet completely shocking death that night.

I sat in my seat for a good 30 minutes after the game ended just staring at the field. I finally dragged my ass to Yak-zies where a friend was waiting with a Jack and Coke all ready to numb my pain, but I didn't want it. I was too numb to drink. I was too numb to do anything. I just wanted to go home and curl into a ball an pretend the whole shit show never happened.

At that time, I lived alone with Schultz as my only "roommate." Normally, when I would get home from work, he would greet me at the door and proceed to tell me about his day by meowing in a tone that seemed to indicate that his life of eating, sleeping, and licking himself all day was a hardship on a par with a life of slave labor. So our normal routine would be me walking in:

Me: Hey buddy. How was your day?

Schultz: Meow

Me: Really?

Schultz: (more insistently) Meeeooowww

Me: You don't say. That sounds terrible.

Schultz: Meooow meow MEOW (grabs a a doorframe with his front paws and "scratches" it to indicate how much of a big tough man he is despite having lost his front claws 9 years earlier)

Me: You DO have a hard life.

And it would go on like that until I would sit down and he could climb on my lap and paw at me until I scratched his chin.

But that night, I walked in and sure enough, there he was to greet me. I managed a "hey buddy," but that was all I had energy for.  I proceeded immediately to the couch and just collapsed with mental exhaustion. Schultz had yet to say a word to me. He sat at my feet for a bit (I don't know how long because my brain was mush that evening, but it seemed like quite awhile).

Then he climbed up on the couch, but instead of climbing directly on my lap and demanding attention, he laid down next to me and just put his head in my lap and sat quietly purring. It was exactly what I needed. Then he reached out with a paw and put it on my hand and just left it there. I just looked down expecting him to start demanding attention, but he just stayed like that. I don't know how long we sat together, but he stayed with me the whole time. Still purring.

He had other times when he seemed to know when I was sad, lonely, sick, or dealing with more Cubs disappointments, but that was the time that really stuck with me because at that point it was probably the most depressed to the core I had ever been.

The problem now is that I feel very close to the same way as I did back in 2003, but he's not here to comfort me. I'd give anything to have him laying on my lap right now.

I miss my buddy.

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  3. GBTS

    I lost my dog as a child abruptly one day. She was healthy the day before. She was feeling sick when I went to school. She was dead by the time I got home (an unknown tumor ruptured her abdomen).

    I feel your pain, Paisley. Out of respect I promise not to shop Alvin in that picture.

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  5. Rizzo the Rat

    mb21 wrote:

    @ Rizzo the Rat:
    No, we don’t know, but I’ve never seen an infielder just give up on a ball after the umpire called the infield fly rule. It’s possible, but I highly doubt an MLB player heard infield fly rule and just said fuck it, I’m not going to bother catching this shit since it’s already an out.

    That is not what the post suggested happened. That’s why I said the commenters didn’t read it.

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  6. Rizzo the Rat

    I also have no idea how plausible the “theory” is; I just think it’s fair to point out that we don’t know how the umpire’s call might have affected things.

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  7. josh

    Sucks, man. My dog is starting to get old and that’s depressing My wife and I have had her almost as long as we’ve been married (11 years)

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  8. Author
    Aisle424

    @ GBTS:
    That’s terrible, GBTS. I’m sorry.

    We don’t really know for sure what was wrong with him, but symptoms seemed to indicate cancer and with his seizures, we guess he had a tumor in his head. We never got it 100% diagnosed because we wouldn’t treat it anyway since the treatment would probably be worse than the tumor and he wouldn’t understand.

    So we really don’t know what went wrong last night. All I know is we went to bed and he was pretty much fine, then he peed the bed, started walking like he was drunk, and stopped eating anything except nutritional paste.

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  9. Author
    Aisle424

    @ mb21:
    Thanks. I knew this would suck since for many years it was just me and him living together. In many ways he was my best friend. I keep thinking it didn’t really happen.

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  13. mb21

    @ Aisle424:
    They’re a part of our lives and I think even more so when you’re single. I really liked what you wrote about the conversation. Reminds me of when I was single and the conversations I’d have with my dog. Very similar. She didn’t meow, but other than that, same thing.

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  14. Berselius

    Sorry for your loss, Tim.

    We wet through something similar with one of our dogs a few years ago. We adopted him from rescue web he was ten years old and he was in bad shape. His previous owners ran a bar as grill and would give him all sorts of greasy crap from the restaurant – he weighed 62 pounds when the volunteers picked him up (which is huge for a Cocker Spaniel). We got his weight down to 30 pounds in a few months, but a year later he was diagnosed with a heart murmur due to a faulty valve. Just before Christmas, we woke up to hear him wheezing, barely able to breathe. We took hi to or awesome vet who was just barely able to stabilize him. We got some medication for him but the vet didn’t think he’d make it through the winter. Once the meds stopped being effective there would be nothing else we could do. He ended up hanging on for another 9 months, and was his normal self right up until the end. It was like playing with house money. He was running around at the dog park two days before he died, which was his favorite place ever.

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  17. josh

    @ mb21:
    The Rangers have been sucking it up, due in no small part to Josh Hamilton. He’s having a good year still, but his K rate is sky-high, and he’s been for shit in the outfield this season.

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  18. mb21

    @ Berselius:
    That’s the dog you told me about when I asked about congestive heart failure, right? My vet didn’t think my dog would live another year, but she’s still her 12 months later. It is exactly like playing with house money too.

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  19. mb21

    For a guy who has been picked up off waivers a couple times in 3+ years of service time, O’Day sure seems to make it to the postseason quite often.

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  20. Berselius

    @ mb21:
    Yeah, it’s the same dog. Our oldest dog (that we adopted in lieu of an engagement ring) just turned 13. She’s blind (glaucoma) but generally healthy, though we had a scare earlier this summer. She had a bunch of bladder infections in a row and we were worried she had bladder cancer, but luckily it looks like that’s not the case.

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  30. josh

    I’m sticking with A’s and Nats for the final. If the O’s can make this a 1-run game, they’re virtually gauranteed to win

    /doesn’t understand probability.

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